Advice I Won't Be Taking (and a Putting Practice Question)

[Shindig]

50 minutes ago, boogielicious said:

Considering the strokes gained I have putting, it is rather an odd suggestion. 

Maybe you're really really good (Snedeker level) at shorter putts, so you're picking up a lot of those?

[boogielicious]

52 minutes ago, Shindig said:

Maybe you're really really good (Snedeker level) at shorter putts, so you're picking up a lot of those?

Not sure. I mean this morning I made a 2 putt from 82 feet and a 20 footer for par. It’s not really a weakness. I’m not sure how they figure it. Here is my last round vs scratch. I would think they would recommend tee shots as a Smart Tip over 10 - 30 foot putts. I need to look into the math.

[iacas]

7 minutes ago, boogielicious said:

I would think they would recommend tee shots as a Smart Tip over 10 - 30 foot putts.

They just give you the top tip for each area of the game, I think.

They're not ordered or sorted. 2+ strokes is a lot. What's the filter on the dates for that recommendation/graph?

[boogielicious]

3 minutes ago, iacas said:

They just give you the top tip for each area of the game, I think.

They're not ordered or sorted. 2+ strokes is a lot. What's the filter on the dates for that recommendation/graph?

That chart was versus scratch for the last round. The one in my first post above was vs a 5 HC for the last three rounds.

[Shindig]

10 minutes ago, boogielicious said:

That chart was versus scratch for the last round. The one in my first post above was vs a 5 HC for the last three rounds.

I found someone with your first name in GG playing a course near you today (of all the data in GG, why is that the easy search? Anyway).  The only thing I can think of is (and this also assumes I found your round) a lot of the long putts were left to 5';  your longest miss was 9' (and you only had three attempts over 5' but within 15').  But the 5' might be an artifact of the system putting the pin and second putt near each other, calling them 5', and treating it as "yes, this was putted from 5' away."

I wonder if their internal system computers SG:Putting separately for different distance groupings when making suggestions.  So maybe their thought is "if this guy can get a lot of his misses closer to the hole, he'll save in expectation."

[boogielicious]

4 minutes ago, Shindig said:

I found someone with your first name in GG playing a course near you today (of all the data in GG, why is that the easy search? Anyway).  The only thing I can think of is (and this also assumes I found your round) a lot of the long putts were left to 5';  your longest miss was 9' (and you only had three attempts over 5' but within 15').  But the 5' might be an artifact of the system putting the pin and second putt near each other, calling them 5', and treating it as "yes, this was putted from 5' away."

I wonder if their internal system computers SG:Putting separately for different distance groupings when making suggestions.  So maybe their thought is "if this guy can get a lot of his misses closer to the hole, he'll save in expectation."

I didn’t edit the short putts much this round. I think it defaults to 5’, but I had a few that were less than 1’.

[iacas]

4 minutes ago, boogielicious said:

I didn’t edit the short putts much this round. I think it defaults to 5’, but I had a few that were less than 1’.

They should only be tracking first putt distance. I wonder if they’re not.

[Shindig]

9 minutes ago, iacas said:

They should only be tracking first putt distance. I wonder if they’re not.

I think this depends on where and why they're computing it.  Please correct me if I'm wrong on the next part.

For the "strokes gained: putting" stat, you're absolutely right:  the distance of the first one is all that matters for how many strokes gained/lost putting on that hole.

However, if they're trying to give advice for which region to suggest practice, they could compute the strokes gained/lost on each putt, or each putt within a region, to identify weaknesses.  For example, if internally they're also computing "strokes gained: putts outside 10'" and "strokes gained: putts inside 10'," they could see which value is higher over a series of rounds and suggest practicing putts in that distance region.  Someone who regularly 3-putts from 40' by hitting the first to about 4' and then missing it should be practicing the short ones, while someone who regularly 3-putts from 40' by hitting the first to 8' and then missing may benefit more from working on speed (or read, or whatever is causing the bad leave).

(This last part is conjecture on my part, it's very possible I'm missing something, especially since it's me commenting on putting).

[iacas]

3 minutes ago, Shindig said:

However, if they're trying to give advice for which region to suggest practice, they could compute the strokes gained/lost on each putt, or each putt within a region, to identify weaknesses.

Right, they shouldn't be doing that.

It is irrelevant if you have a 20 footer that you hit to 1 foot or 6 feet, if you two-putt it. I can see how one might think they're doing "extra," or they're saying "let's track those six footer, too!" to get more data.

But it's not the same, because golfers who know what SG:P measures don't care about the second putt (I've always edited all of my putts, but more because I'm anal than anything else). The display even shows you the distance from the putt to the hole… because that's what matters.

I'll ask.

Someone could figure this out by making a round where you give yourself 30 footers on every hole, and leave all of them to 1 foot on one round, and 10 feet on the other round. But two-putt them all.

---

I sent this email:

I have a question on SG:P in GAME Golf.

If you have a 30-footer, and two-putt, that should be all that matters for SG:P. It shouldn't matter if you hit that 30-footer to 5 inches or 5 feet if you make the second putt.

I think GG might be tracking the SG:P of every putt. It may be doing it one of two ways:

The correct way is that it notes that you have a 30-footer, and calculates the # of putts from there, and assigns an SG value. That's it. It only cares about the distance of the first putt (to the hole, not how far you putt it), and the # of putts it takes to hole out.

The two "bad" ways that it MAY be doing:

1. It says "30 footer, 2 putts." But it also says "10 footer, 1 putt." This would result in an overly good SG:P for that hole. I don't think this is what it's doing.

2. It says "30 footer, hit to 5 feet." This is a negative SG value. Then it says "5 footer, holed" which has a positive SG value. These should cancel out and result in the same thing as the correct way, but…

Where it fails is that people who understand how SG:P is calculated *may not care about editing their second putts." So if they have a 30-footer, and that part is right, they may not edit their second putt to say five inches if the default value by GG is five feet. It should be irrelevant.

But what makes me think that this is being miscalculated are people who are losing less than 1 stroke putting are being told they can improve their putting by 2.5 strokes if they work on putts from 10-33 feet.

[RFKFREAK]

On 7/13/2021 at 1:58 PM, pganapathy said:

To be honest, when I am on a practice green, I am mostly trying to judge speed, and hoping that the practice green and course greens are the same speed on the stimpmeter.  I don't worry about beed or read a great deal.  Sure, I would like to hole putts, but holing them on the practice green is worthless for me, unless I do the same on the course

This is pretty much me, too.  What i normally do is take the putter head back to where visual it reaches my rear foot and estimate how many get feet it goes, do the same to where my hands seems to reach my back foot, then also where my front arm feels straightened.  Should practice lag putting but usually i run out of time or am bored.